Hey everybody, this is Joe Burnich with bigwestmarketing.com. In this short video, what I want to do is show you how to close down your Google My Business account. There’s several reasons for doing this, but there seems to be some confusion over deleting and closing. So let’s get started with that right now.
Okay. So a few years ago I did a video, a YouTube video, on how to delete your Google My Business account. And even to this day, we still have people watch that video and then contact us wondering why it’s not working the way that video says. Well, as you know, Google makes changes all the time and one of the big changes they made is on how to actually close down a Google My Business account. So the reason a lot of people do this… So, there are those people that actually are closing down their business and they just don’t want it to show up on Google, but more often than not, what people are trying to do is close down or delete their Google My Business account completely and then start fresh. Well, Google doesn’t really allow you to do that anymore because people were kind of taking advantage of the system and every time a bunch of people start taking advantage of one of Google’s openings or loopholes or whatever, then they close that and they changed the game.
So that’s what’s happened here. So what I’m going to do is just show you the only way that you can really do it right now, and I’m sorry if this doesn’t fit into what you want to happen, but this is the way as of 2020. So here we go. So I’m going to jump into Big West Marketing, my Google My Business account. I’m in the back end here, in the dashboard. I’m going to go down to info and this is where I can make changes to all my basic information, my address, my business name, my areas, my hours, all that good stuff. But you see along the right hand side here, it says Close or Remove this Listing, okay? You click on that down arrow and then you click on Mark as Permanently Closed.
Now what’s going to happen is, is it still going to show up in your account as it exists but it’s going to have a little red piece of text that says permanently closed. It’ll also show that on the front end if someone finds your business, okay? On the front end it will say, Permanently Closed. Now, what happens is, after several months or more, depending on what your situation is, Google will actually remove that themselves when they see fit, okay? There’s no way to force Google to go in there and delete that account completely. They don’t want businesses that are willing to make a bunch of mistakes online and then just be able to… Kind of like filing bankruptcy. They don’t want you to be able to just start over fresh. Okay? So the only way to do that would be to get a brand new business name, phone number, website. And do the whole nine yards, not just your Google My Business account. So get that out of your head. If that’s your plan, you’re not going to be able to do that. And I’m sorry, I know people don’t like to hear that. I know people are going to probably put comments down below and they’re going to be all angry with me. But I’m just relaying you the information. I’m just telling you how it works.
If this changes, I will make a new video and link down below so that you can go watch the new video and do whatever the new update will be. But as of right now, in 2020, this is the game. This is how it works, okay? So like I said, you cannot delete it completely. You cannot delete your Google My Business account completely, but you can mark it permanently closed and then have Google find it and delete it later. So a lot of people have duplicate listings or they’ve hired a not-so-ethical SEO or marketing company that was playing games and trying to open up a bunch of fake business accounts so that you can rank in different areas. I know that still works here and there in very isolated cases and Google hasn’t caught up with those people yet, but for the majority of us, don’t even don’t even play those games. Okay? Just do it right the first time and then you don’t have to worry about all this stuff. But if you’re already in that boat, the only thing you can do right now is mark the fake business listings or the duplicates or whatever you want to call them, mark them as permanently closed and let Google decide when to get rid of them.
One thing you can do is make sure that there’s… If there’s any specific information on the internet, in Yelp or Facebook or anywhere else in any other directories, make sure that stuff is gone too. And that will speed up the process of Google actually removing them off of the internet, out of Google’s index. Okay? So if you have any questions, give us a call. 406-493-1881. if you ever need help with your SEO work, your web design work, even some some pay-per-click work, then give us a call. 406-493-1881. We do have a 30 minute free consultations. Also, put that link down below in the description. Once again, my name is Joe Burnich with bigwestmarketing.com. Thank you very much.
